IS THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO STILL A CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY?

In the late 1940s, Bishop Charles Buddy and Mother Rosalie Clifton Hill had a dream to create a Catholic university in San Diego on a hill overlooking the ocean. Ground was broken in 1949 on the new university named after our city’s patron saint, San Diego de Alcala.

In the late 1950s, my parents contributed what a middle-class Catholic couple with two small kids could to finance the continuing construction of the University of San Diego.

Over the years, many thousands of San Diego Catholics did the same, with major contributions from many prominent Catholics and non-Catholics alike, including the former and current Catholic publishers of this newspaper, Helen Copley and Douglas Manchester.

In a “Vision” statement, the trustees affirm “The University of San Diego is a nationally preeminent Catholic University.”

The USD website under the heading “Core Values” states:

“The University of San Diego expresses its Catholic identity by witnessing and probing the Christian message as proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church.”

This history and these commitments have been called into question by a recent event which provoked protests from Catholic students, parents and supporters of USD.

Last Thursday, the USD Associated Students sponsored a second annual “Celebration of Gender Expression: Supreme Drag Superstar” held at the Shiley Auditorium on campus and planned by PRIDE, an on-campus coalition of homosexual, bisexual and transgender activists.

During the drag show, men and women dressed in the opposite gender’s costumes, danced, sang and took questions in a “dialogue.” The host was Manila Luzon, who opponents of the show called a homosexual drag queen who supports same-sex “marriage.”

Responding to objections, Tim O’Malley, USD vice president of university relations, flippantly said, “there isn’t anything in the show that violates the teachings of the Catholic Church. That is to say the church and the church teachings are silent on cross-dressing.”

O’Malley defended the show, saying “nondiscrimination is at the heart of the university proceeding with an event like this,” and promised it would be a PG-13 show.

Catholics who adhere to the church teachings against homosexual behavior and who champion traditional marriage were appalled that the “Catholic” university had so obviously rejected its “core values” in favor of a politically correct view of “discrimination.”

Protesters rallied and prayed at the campus last Thursday denouncing a university-sanctioned event so contradictory to church teachings.

In a written statement responding to the controversy, USD’s VP of student affairs, Carmen Vasquez, offered a three-point justification for the show’s approval:

1) The program’s content and design are intended to illustrate the complexities of issues around gender identity and gender expression.

2) The event supports the church’s teaching on the dignity of the human person and does not promote either behavior or lifestyle that is contrary to the teachings of the church.

3) The event complies with the same rules and protocols applied to all other sanctioned campus events planned and carried out by the students at USD.

I asked the current leader of San Diego’s Catholics, Bishop Robert Brom, a member of the USD governing board, to appear on my U-T TV program to reconcile an event which promoted homosexual and transgender life and gay marriage with Catholic teaching.

The bishop declined to appear. Spokesman Rodrigo Valdiva sent an email in response which said, “Bishop Brom is deferring to the university for any comments in this regard. I presume you have seen the statement by Carmen Vasquez which represents USD’s position.”

Does the bishop endorse these three points? Does the bishop really believe that a drag queen show put on by homosexuals glamorizing the homosexual, bisexual and transgender life and promoting same-sex marriage “supports the church’s teaching”?

Prominent local attorney Charles LiMandri, former president of USD’s national alumni association, does not. He pulled his son from the school even before this second drag show, when a petition gathered over 20,000 signatures last year protesting the first show.

LiMandri told the U-T, “I want USD to come back to the vision of the founders and support and reflect the Catholic values that I promoted as a student leader and an alumni leader.”

Thousands of other Catholic families put their sons and daughters at USD to uphold the morals of their faith in a setting of quality university education, not to be subjected to an officially sanctioned repudiation of those morals.

Bishop Brom: Is USD still a Catholic university?

Hedgecock hosts a news talk program on U-T TV, Cox channel 114, AT&T channels 17 and 1017, and on utsandiego.com